Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – SCG Baltimore Analysis

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If you haven’t watched all of the Magic on Shadows over Innistrad weekend and don’t want to be spoiled go watch it now and stop reading!

Spoiler warnings aside, congrats to fellow New York Rangers aficionado Jim Davis for his win with Bant Company.  If you played a Rally deck before the rotation this one is pretty similar make up (largely a backbone of Jace / Collected Company deck) so a switch would be easy.

Archangels and Lieutenants

Let’s take a look at the decklists from the Open and see what  information we can glean about the future:

craig wescoe

Thanks Craig!  Yes, half of the Top 8 of this event was some version of a white Humans Aggro deck.  Nine of the top 32 decks were a flavor of Humans Aggro deck.  Some decks stayed to the tried and true mono-white while others splashed blue or green for some exceptional main deck humans and additional sideboard flexibility.  What all of the decks have in commons is this base:

thaliaslieutenantknight of the white orchidalways watching

White-based human decks are likely to become a mainstay for people who really like to put on the beatdown.  That being said, I think the current price of $2-3 for these rares is unsustainable for a deck that was 29% of the top 32 meta game.  I expect these cards to creep up slowly because they’re not very flashy.  However, if a humans deck does get a win they will probably spike.

Goggles in the Ice

If you watched the Open you get to see StarCity Games’ writers a lot if they’re doing well.  Well, Todd Anderson was doing pretty well this weekend with this monstrosity of a deck.

thingintheice

Thing in the Ice was definitely a very important part of this deck as it let Todd go from defense to offense very quickly and close out a game almost immediately.  That being said, it’s price is still very confusing. The diverging buylist price and average sell price have me concerned that the player demand is not actually there.  I am still of the opinion you should sell these cards until we can see if it does anything in Modern and Legacy.  From the results this past weekend it doesn’t look anyone is trying it besides the “fun of.”

PyromancersGoggles

The price on these have already gone crazy (TCG low is $10 as of Sunday, up from about $2 on Friday) so I wouldn’t buy them until it all settles down.  I tried to play a Pyromancer’s Goggles deck a while back but it always ends up being frustrating when you draw the wrong half of your deck.  Lightning Axe might be the removal spell it needs to make Goggles consistent enough to play but I don’t think this card can really carry a $10 price tag for long.  I’m a seller.

fallofthetitans

Boom flavor, right?  This was played in Todd’s deck and is still a bulk rare.  If you’re really intent on playing the deck I can’t imagine these being cut.  It uses all of your extra mana and works great when forked with the goggles.  This is the kind of card I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets played in larger quantities later and goes up to a few bucks.  Right now you can buy in for a quarter (and worst case scenario sell it back for a dime) so there is little downside to picking up a personal playset.

avacyn

White is really good

Roughly 85% of the top 32 deck lists at SCG Baltimore played basic Plains.  Of the five decks that didn’t, only one was in the Top 8, and only one more in the Top 16.  Turns out all of the white spells are really good right now.  Declaration in Stone, Archangel Avacyn, Archangel of Tithes, and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar showed up in multiple different types of decks this weekend.

declarationinstone

Declaration in Stone showed up as a 4-of in the 75 of six of seven Top 8 decks it could be played in.  The seventh deck was Jim Davis’s which only played a paltry two.  It’s clear this is a real show stopper for a lot of decks and allows the rag tag human army get past anything with ease.  I’m going to say this is going to end up a lot like Hero’s Downfall.  It has the potential to hit $15-18 for a week or two and then fall down to a more reasonable number once MTGO redemption starts.

archangel avacyn

This card has a real chance to be another Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy.  I’m not sure yet if it can keep climbing (it’s already $30 on the cheapest places on the internet).  There wasn’t the full four copies in every white deck because some of them played 22 lands and having consistent 5-drops is overly optimistic.  The casual angel appeal will also keep this card high so I’d expect it to follow Declaration in Stone’s trajectory and become cheaper once MTGO redemption starts.  Right now I’m selling my extra copies to lock in profit.

Tokens

westvale abbeySecure the Wastes

Westvale Abbey was definitely really good in the decks it was good in.  That sounds pretty obvious but Dragonlord Ojutai was really only mediocre in the decks it was good in.  Token decks that can dedicate whole turns to flipping the Abbey will be a real factor in Standard.  Their ability to chump humans until they can assemble a 9/7 haste lifelink to catch them up is huge.  Going forward this style deck might morph into a more all-in version with Cryptolith but time will tell.  I think this deck will be most affected by testing and tuning done at the Pro Tour.  All that information aside,  I’m super not interested in hanging onto Abbeys or Secure the Wastes with their current price tag.

 

Final Thoughts

  • Ancestral Vision probably won’t be as good as people want it to be.  I didn’t see very many in the Top 8 of the last Modern Classic
  • If we are going to see great innovation in Modern I would keep a close look at GP LA/Charlotte weekend.  We will see big movers then.
  • Shadows over Innistrad EV is very high right now. I’d sell everything you are not actively playing with while you still can.
  • If you want to meet up I will be making the tournament grind the entire month of May, hitting up GP NYC, SCG Indy, GP LA, and probably GP Minneapolis in an effort to secure two byes for the next year of Magic
Sigmund Ausfresser

PROTRADER: Fact Or Fiction – This Week’s Spikes

Another week has gone by and with it another handful of spiking cards are in the books.  This time, though, many of the recent jumps were catalyzed by a very definitive occasion: the recent ban and restricted announcement.  By now, everyone probably knows the changes but I’ll share it here for easy referencing.

B&R

It’s not remotely surprising to see Ancestral Vision, Sword of the Meek, and Thopter Foundry all jump on this news.  But these aren’t the only cards that saw significant appreciation last week.  Peripheral cards like Time Sieve and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas also increased in price by over 100%.

And then, there are other cards that more than doubled since last week with no apparent cause.  This week I’m going to scrutinize some of the movers and shakers of the week, calling out whether I believe their new price will stick, go even higher, or fall back down to earth.  Each card will either have the right demand base or it won’t: it’s Fact or Fiction Week!

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expensive cards

ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: The Miracle and the Sleeper; Introducing HUFAs

Let’s start off by quickly acknowledging the B&R Announcement from Monday. Here is an excerpt from an article I wrote in January, a week or so before Pro Tour: Oath of the Gatewatch:

“So why is this time different? The answer is Eye of Ugin. Between Oath and Battle for Zendikar, we suddenly have a respectable amount of colorless Eldrazi creatures along a much broader curve. Eye of Ugin, despite not actually tapping for mana, functions as an extremely powerful accelerant, with the additional ability to find your strongest threats late in the game. When used in conjunction with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Eye of Ugin can tap for mana, making it the closest corollary to Mishra’s Workshop we’ve ever seen (it’s actually better when you are playing more than one creature a turn, but worse in the sense that it’s legendary). Eldrazi Temple similarly functions as a worse Eye of Ugin, providing copies five through eight…

…I also don’t expect this archetype to last another six months.”

All I’m going to say is that ProTraders have been having discussions about this series of events since BEFORE the deck actually broke out. Seems good to me.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Casual Fridays

Coming Back to PucaTrade

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Back in December, I wrote about how I was scared of PucaTrade. I was worried about how point buying influences this economy, and recently Travis wrote about what Puca is good for.

I am here, hat in hand, to say that I was wrong. PucaTrade is worth using.

However, it’s not as easy as the developers want to make it sound.

What they want you to believe is that you send off cards, and then you get the cards that you want. For many people, it is exactly that.

However, Puca also offers an interesting look into some of our buying and selling habits, as well as providing some fascinating insights.

So what are the ideas I’ve come around on?

#1: You can get expensive cards, it just won’t happen by itself.

James Chillcott and I had a great conversation on Twitter a few weeks back, about building a network on Puca and being the one who has points available for any card. I scoffed, wanting to keep my free account, but I broke down and got the upgrade to Uncommon so I could offer a bounty on the Gaea’s Cradle I wanted so badly.

Even with my name changed to “10% on Cradle!” I wasn’t getting what I wanted.

Then I saw on Twitter that someone had gotten a new Cradle and wanted to sell it. I asked if he was interested in selling it for points (it was not NM) and we agreed on a price. Done. Now my token deck is ready to rock again.

There’s a lot of people on Pucatrade offering bonuses for their wants, for Power, for foils, you name it. Having the points is very good, but doing the work and making those connections will pay off as well.

#2: Spikes are still handled badly.

In case you like your life under a rock, lots of cards had a spike in price this week after the Banned and Restricted announcement. Several cards on Puca were taken off of want lists by administrators, because the price went very high without a lot of warning.

The example I want to use is Time Sieve.

timesieve

 

Time Sieve is pretty amazing with the Thopter/Sword combo. Five mana gets you five life, five tokens, and an extra turn. Quite the loop and tough to deal with.

Naturally, this card has seen a spike this week, from being about $2, up to $20, and now about $13. PucaTrade, after several cycles of dealing with these spikes, has instituted a system where cards are flagged, and when they are flagged enough, they are not allowed to be traded anymore.

Their reasoning is like this: For every one person who says “2000 points to get a Time Sieve! Awesome!!” there are at least five people who had Time Sieve on their want list when it was 200 points, and did not want the card at the spiked price.

Yesterday, Thursday, I saw that someone had just added Time Sieve to their want list and I clicked to send it, only to have them request a cancellation two hours later because they didn’t want it at the current 1400-point price. Hellaciously annoying.

#3: No system for less-than-NM conditions or foreign languages.

This is more of a problem that you might think, especially considering the number of people who want older cards. It’s next to impossible to find Alpha or Beta cards in NM condition, just because of how things were. Playing in penny sleeves is awful, and I remember the summer when the first ‘black backs’ came out.

So on Pucatrade, someone has to be paying for Uncommon level or more, so that some points can be exchanged. I send a card, and when I get the points transferred, I have to send some points back. Or they send me the card outside of the official trade system, and I send them an agreed-upon number of points as a gift.

Same thing with foreign editions, or signed cards, etc. It’s not unmanageable, but it is sort of a pain.

#4: It’s a fantastic way to turn old cards into new cards!

I kid you not, I carried a playset of Flying Men around in my binder for years. Years! I knew one day I’d meet someone who wanted them.

Spoiler alert: I never did.

However, I did find lots of people on Puca who wanted the playset, or a Goblin General from Portal: Second Age, or my leftover Collective Voyage, or either of my Awakening Zone, or so on, and so forth…

I’ve gotten to turn those into the aforementioned Cradle, lots of EDH foils, and standard specs. Standard cards are incredibly easy to get with PucaPoints, I’ve been looking for a foil Future Sight Graven Cairns for three months now, but when I wanted playsets of Radiant Flames and Painful Truths, those were in my hands within a week.

Pro Tip for foiling out a Commander deck: Get your foil version, and then send the nonfoil out for more points.

#5: Patience, when getting or giving cards.

I don’t remember how long ago or which writer here said it, but they said that one of their screens at work had a Chrome tab on 30-second refresh, checking all day for cards to be sent. I remember reading that and having a lot of reactions, but the main one was, “I can’t check it all day! I can barely check once every 48 hours!”

You don’t need to maximize the refreshes that way, just log in once a day and check on what’s needed. Puca has gotten big enough that cards or points rarely languish.

Same thing with your wants. Have your want list, let it sit. Be patient. Make some connections. Ask people, talk to them. Puca does tell you how many people have a card on their Have list, though as far as I know, you can’t find those people directly.

I’d love to hear your experiences with Puca. Tell me the good and the bad. I’ve been on both sides of the fence, and I can absolutely see a day when I stop using it. I admit, I’ve spent a lot more on stamps than I ever thought I would, and I’ve even had to buy extra toploaders! So let’s hear your thoughts, here in the comments or over in the forums.

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY